This Week in Steampunk History – July 4th to 10th

This week the Pandora Society Bureau of Time Travel has collected a handful of historical events from each day of this week in the hopes of inspiring some writer to pen the next great Steampunk novel.

July 4th

The original Alice

1862 – Lewis Carroll tells Alice Liddell a story that would grow into Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and its sequels.

1879 – Anglo-Zulu War: The Zululand capital of Ulundi is captured by British troops and burned to the ground, ending the war and forcing King Cetshwayo to flee.

1903 – Dorothy Levitt is reported as the first English woman to compete in a ‘motor race’.

July 5th

1833 – AdmiralCharles Napier vanquishes the navy of the PortugueseusurperDom Miguel at the third Battle of Cape St. Vincent.

1833 – Lê Văn Khôi along with 27 soldiers stage a mutiny taking over the Phiên An citadel, developing into the Lê Văn Khôi revolt against Emperor Minh Mạng.

1915 – The Liberty Bell leaves Philadelphia by special train on its way to the Panama–Pacific International Exposition. This is the last trip outside Philadelphia that the custodians of the bell intend to permit.

July 6th

The Pennsylvania state militia arrives to quell the hostilities, art by Thure de Thulstrup

1865 – The first issue of The Nation magazine is published.

1892 – Dadabhai Naoroji is elected as the first Indian Member of Parliament in Britain.

1898 – The death of crime boss Soapy Smith, killed in the Shootout on Juneau Wharf, releases Skagway, Alaska from his iron grip.

July 9th

1864 – Thomas Briggs, was murdered, the first killing on a British train

1877 – The inauguralWimbledon Championships begins.

1900 – Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom gives Royal Assent to an Act creating Australia thus uniting separate colonies on the continent under one federal government.

July 10th

Florida becomes part of the USA

1821 – The United States takes possession of its newly bought territory of Florida from Spain.

1850 – U.S. President Millard Fillmore is sworn in, a day after becoming President upon Zachary Taylor‘s death.

1882 – War of the Pacific: Chile suffers its last military defeat in the Battle of La Concepción when a garrison of 77 men is annihilated by a 1,300-strong Peruvian force, many of them armed with spears.